Far Cry 3 Review | X360 Magazine

X360 Magazine: "We want to love it because there’s so much to love, but instead we just like it, and wish that the rules it set for its open world could have been carried across to its campaign mission structure. Freedom is not free, and if Ubi won’t throw in its buck o’ five, who will?"
(Far Cry 3, Xbox 360)
8/10

He brings up interesting points though. One of which is that enemies DO NOT spawn, so if you clear out all the pirate camps there is nothing else left to do, which kind of defeats the purpose of having an open world/sand-box type game

yes one of the biggest criticism of Far Cry 2 was the spawning but mostly because of how fast enemies spawned not because of them spawning at all. Enemies should instead spawn every few game days like how Skyrim does it. Wonder if this can be implemented through a patch

This game looks compelling, however I read some stuff in the GameSpot review and this one that look rather troublesome.
I imagined the story missions would be a bit linear but I didn't think you would be constrained by "return to the combat zone"-type prompts like this review says. It's got to feel really artificial and weird in a sandbox game. I thought the limits would be more physical, like walls, caves and such.

I'm also a bit worried of what GS said about respawning at a checkpoint after getting shot, with enemies revived but the ammo you had picked before you died still gone.
Reminds me of the Battlefield Bad Company 1/Borderlands type of design, which is annoying.

Whilst Fc3's narrative and story missions are very good. However, outside of the story missions the open world acts more like backdrop than a legitimate in-game world. The issue coming from many of the games features cancelling each other out after a few hours of play.

Knocking the radio towers out gives you free weapons at the stores. Making the money system pretty much irrelavent bar weapon attachments and ammo, which after a few hours are pocket change. All the challenges 'Knife throwing etc' just give you money. Loot is everywhere but never gives you anything significant.

Dealing with outposts gives you fast travel locations. The more fast travels you unlock the less you need vehicles. The outposts themselves only contain 8 enemies tops so even though the game gives you a variety of weapons there is hardly any need for them. Gone is all the tactical stuff found in Fc2.

Once the outposts have been cleared there are no enemies about removing any sense of danger from travelling around.

All of the collectibles don't do anything. The skill trees don't force any type of choice and so on, and so on.

In the end, what is the point of having a large open world. When the incentives to explore it are rendered increasingly more pointless as progression is made.